Website archives

The long-term preservation of government websites is well under way (Letters, 1 January), through an active capture programme run by the National Archives, and the Paris-based European Archive. In 2003, we started archiving samples of government websites and this was made systematic last year. We now capture all UK central government websites three times a year. To date, the UK Government Web Archive contains 340m web pages available to view for free. This includes non-departmental public bodies and government agencies, such as the UK Border Agency. We are also implementing a redirection tool, so that websites can automatically link to their archived pages – making broken links for government websites a thing of the past. The National Archives is constantly developing new ways to ensure the continuity of government information now, and for the future.